


so much clearer (with your toothbrush by the mirror)

by justalittlebit



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-25
Updated: 2010-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:19:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalittlebit/pseuds/justalittlebit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim'd leave him but he's kind of warm, and if they get divorced he might get left alone with the kids. And then they'd all mutiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>  **[Unknown LJ tag]**[](http://screamlet.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**screamlet**](http://screamlet.dreamwidth.org/)  betaed and did beautifully. This is a fic for Sweet Charity, for the lovely Geek Lite who can't possibly have been expecting this fic (blame me and me alone, this is what happens when you give me choices) and who was incredibly patient and generous. This is, yes, the Duggar!fic. The title is sort of from [Might Tell You Tonight](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TosO5ti3LIk) but probably is not the actual line but only what I heard. Cut text from [Pageant of the Bizarre](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOQUEvUku3A) a song I have mentioned before because it is one of my favorites.

_**so much clearer (with your toothbrush) **_

  
**Title:** so much clearer (with your toothbrush by the mirror)  
**Author: ** **[Unknown LJ tag]**[](http://raphaela667.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**raphaela667**](http://raphaela667.dreamwidth.org/)  
**Pairing(s)**: Kirk/Spock  
**Genre:** _crack_ and is reality tv fusion a thing? Do we have that now? I don't want to start it.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, never was, never will be.  
**Warnings:** mentions of sex, same-sex marriage, pregnancy (lots of pregnancy), premature babies and just a lot of babies in general  
**Rating:** R  
**Summary:** Jim'd leave him but he's kind of warm, and if they get divorced he might get left alone with the kids. And then they'd all mutiny.  
**Notes: ****[Unknown LJ tag]**[](http://screamlet.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**screamlet**](http://screamlet.dreamwidth.org/)  betaed and did beautifully. This is a fic for Sweet Charity, for the lovely Geek Lite who can't possibly have been expecting this fic (blame me and me alone, this is what happens when you give me choices) and who was incredibly patient and generous. This is, yes, the Duggar!fic. The title is sort of from [Might Tell You Tonight](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TosO5ti3LIk) but probably is not the actual line but only what I heard. Cut text from [Pageant of the Bizarre](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOQUEvUku3A) a song I have mentioned before because it is one of my favorites.

  
**00:03**

This happens, sometimes. Jim'll wake up in the middle of the night, just like this, hot and sweaty and all tangled up in dead-to-the-world Vulcan, sometimes a baby or two (today it's T'Pala, three and chubby). Anyway, he'll wake up, all of a sudden, like he used to when they were under fire on the _Enterprise_ and he will think; _holy fucking God, there's nineteen of them_.  


Sometimes, he falls right back asleep, wakes up in the morning still hopelessly outnumbered and tries to fake through another day without doing anyone any permanent psychological damage. Sometimes, he wakes Spock up, too, shares this sudden insight that _they have nineteen children under the age of twenty_. Spock will nod, sagely, say something like; "go back to sleep, one must be awake to parent such an astonishing number of children," or if the kids have been really awful that day; "no more words, none."

Tonight, Kelvin starts to screech just right when he's on the edge of falling back asleep and Jim draws on some reserve of power developed during four-day benders and seven-night-long cramming incidents in his second term at the Academy to get him a bottle and try to cajole him back to sleep when all Kelvin wants to do is scream until his little lungs give out.

Then, he crawls back into bed, whimpering baby tucked up next to him, shakes Spock's shoulder and when Spock opens one bleary, brown eye, he says; "You, you were the one who got me into this you _asshole_," and falls asleep.

**02:44**

  
**  
**

T'Pala squirms her way out of bed, pulls Spock along with her, and Jim only wakes for long enough to realize he can kind of _sprawl_ as long as he keeps Kelvin tucked against his chin.

**02:48**

  
**  
**

Spock comes back to bed.

Stupid Spock.

Jim'd leave him but he's kind of warm, and if they get divorced he might get left _alone_ with the kids. And then they'd all mutiny.

**04:45**

  
**  
**

What's amazing is that they both managed to sleep _that_ long before Kelvin started gnawing on Spock's ear and Jim had to return him to his crib, and then he was up anyway, and he wanted to go for a run before it got desert-hot and dusty, and every breath started hurting like _hell_ and his legs would feel too heavy by the afternoon.

Jim's going to be fifty in a couple weeks. They don't really talk about it, except the kids are up to something and Spock keeps kissing right behind his right ear and reminding him that _Spock_ suffered the indignities of aging just _fine_ last year, so Jim should just calm down. Only, Spock still looks like he's thirty and Spock was _born_ for this kind of gravity and this kind of air. Whenever they're on Earth, Spock contrives to look damp all the time and then Jim feels guilty about it.

By five, Jim's stumbling into shorts and running shoes, knocking on Amanda's door to try to get her up. She says she wants to start morning runs before she goes to the Academy, but he and Spock have talked about it and neither of them think she's really going to turn down the offer she's got coming from the _Vulcan_ Academy in a few weeks. Still, won't hurt her to move, to wake up before noon even if she's just hiking back to bed right after.

She stumbles out, looking a little confused.

"Run, baby girl?" Jim suggests, and she screws up her face.

"Don' call me that, Dad," she mumbles, but goes back into the room, changes in the dark since Lee's still _gotta_ be sleeping (please, let Lee be still in there, he's not the kind of father who bars windows, but that girl makes him _want_ to). She comes out, holding a brush and an elastic band, looking miserable. Jim gets it. She's the only one of the kid's who got his grandma's curls, and they've always been a bitch for her. He remembers learning how to braid her hair, and Lee's a couple year's later - realizing how much easier it was with the pressed-straight thickness of Vulcan hair than with Amanda's fine ringlets. He realized, too, how much he used to like the hour or so he'd get to spend his daughter and a comb in the morning, their family going on around them. She didn't ask for this, for about ten years. He figures, either way, she's leaving next year and she knows it. Probably wants to be a little girl as long as she can.

"Yeah, c'mon," he says, settles her on the couch and does it, more quickly than he could've imagined at thirty-one. He's got eleven daughters now, and none of them'll listen when he suggests they go bald (Spencer shaved off all his hair two months ago, and has a really lumpy head, but Spock says it'll be damaging if they talk about it too much).

"Couple miles?"

"I'll go easy on you," she says, and smirks, and somehow when she does that she's all _Spock_, even though Spock'd never lower himself to smirking.

**05:49**

  
**  
**

Jim and Amanda tumble back through the door, into the kitchen, stripping off their shoes, covered in red dust (the wrong color, Spock still says sometimes, looking despondent, and Jim finds the best thing for it is to grab his chin, kiss him once, firm and close-mouthed, like they're already old, like they don't have nineteen kids worth of _exactly_ how much Jim likes Spock under him, and then he'll point Spock's face towards whichever kid is nearest and say "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but we're home anyway." Doesn't make it better, but it doesn't make it worse, either).

The house is already moving around them; Spock's in the kitchen, across the island from them, Kelvin on his hip, the baby still mostly asleep but whining like he's hungry. There's Leo next to him, because Leo'd be up at three in the morning if he and Jim didn't have stern talk once a week about how people who insist on waking their fathers up at ridiculous hours don't get to go see their namesakes in Georgia for a week in August (this is a dirty, _dirty_ lie; the kids love Bones, all of them, but even if they all hated him Jim'd send them out because when they're in Georgia he is _alone _with his _husband_ and he feels like he's _married_ to Spock, not just fighting a losing battle against a house full of small people who wants to abolish bedtime. Though, by about the Thursday, he and Spock are missing the noise so much they start calling the kids twice a day and playing loud music and punching things, respectively).

"We will have breakfast in an hour," Spock says, dropping a glancing kiss on the crown of Amanda's head as she darts past him.

You have to be _competitive_ to get in the shower in this house. 'Till they were ten kids in, he and Spock had their own, but that got stupid when the kids started to smell, so Jim runs for it, too.

Spock'll hate him for it, but breakfast is an unpleasant experience even when you're not the sticky-sweaty kind of nasty.

**05:54**

  
**  
**

He's been in the shower for _two minutes_, and he's got shampoo in his hair and his eyes screwed shut when Ben barrels in.

"I _hate_ him," Ben announces, all of his nine years of towering fury. Ben, Jim's pretty sure, was born peeved at something. He has no idea what, but if he ever finds it, he is going to kick it _very hard_ because no one does bitching like Ben, and it'd only been worse when he was pre-verbal.

"Who?"

"Sa-_mekh_," Ben says, as if this should be obvious. As if he's hated Spock for _years_. Jim fights not to find it adorable, because yeah, Ben means it _now_, but he won't in twenty minutes. Still, it's not the kind of thing he should encourage the kids saying, so he tilts his head back and washes the soap out of his hair, opens his eyes and looks at the shadow of his son through the curtain. He loves real-water showers. He loves the Vulcan aristocracy for getting him one, even though they still don't like him very much.

"Why would you say something like that?"

"He _changed the timer_," Ben tells him, planting his hands on his hips. "I was _practicing_ before school for _fifteen minutes_ because he _makes me_ and he _changed the timer_ and I would've had to do _nineteen extra_ if I did not catch him."

"That doesn't sound like the kind of thing Sa-mekh'd do just to be mean to you," Jim tells him, grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist before he steps out of the shower. "He'd never be mean to you on purpose. Did you talk to him about it?" Ben shakes his head.

"So?"

"_Nineteen extra minutes_," Ben whines.

"Go."

**07:01**

"_Spock!_" Jim cries out, Ben seated next to him, repentantly scooping up oatmeal, baby seat on his other side, with Tamara getting ready to launch her sippy-cup into the ether at any moment. T'Lask is across from Jim, impassively staring at her math homework in that way that means she's so confused that she'd _scream_ if she didn't have every ounce of Spock's stiff-spined Vulcan resolve. Jim can't help her with her math, anymore, at least not without a few minutes of quiet and a calculator. Spock'd probably be able to do it, given a split second of quiet (which would mean hauling her away from breakfast and into Spock's office, where even the worst of the kids know to shut the hell up).

"I am cooking," Spock calls back, even though what he means is that he's pressing buttons on the replicator because he can't really cook, he can only pretend to. And even replicator buttons keep them both fairly busy, school mornings.

"But _math_," Jim whines, and T'Lask and Storrel both look at him like he's deficient.

"It's only mathematics, Father. I could do it," Storrel says. Jim doesn't really know what this father thing of his is, but he's rolling with it, for the most part. Kids are weird at fourteen. He's done it five times now and he's not the biggest fan of the age. Four is his favorite; four's great.

"Then help your sister out," Jim advises, "_no, _Tam. You can _drink_ the juice. You can _glare_ at the juice, but you can't _launch_ the juice. Sweetheart, coffee?"

"I was in line first, Daddy!" Leo announces. "Pancakes, Sa-mekh."

Jim hears Spock's determined "No," before he's diving to get Tamara's juice before it thwacks into T'Pala, who is concentrating on her cereal in a way only a toddler could.

**07:20**

"But the math got _done_, didn't it?" Jim says. "And why was it getting done this morning anyway? You were watching vids all night with Lee. Coulda done your math then."

"It was the way he _did it,_ Dad."

"What?" He's honestly confused. And doesn't really know why he's dealing with this problem except that T'Lask screaming at Storrel got Kelvin going which got Tamara screaming and pulling hair, so that got him Taven on a rampage through the living room because he had been _wronged_ and could Jim not _see that_? He figured he'd deal with the root cause then get Taven down from the rafters and into something that could reasonably be worn to kindergarten instead of just underpants (Spock's, somehow) and one sock.

"He took away my stylo and he just _did it_." Jim would've let anyone who offered do his math homework at thirteen. But he _chose_ to marry Spock and though he can't remember the minute he picked it, he did choose to have a family with Spock, too. He should've seen this coming.

"OK, go get him, we'll talk. Pack your bag and hey - T'Lask, be my girl and help the little girls out, alright?"

**07:45**

"Why the hell are you still in the house? Out, out, all of you - here, T'San, note - I'm only writing one, just tell them it applies."

Jim doesn't get how they can all get up in time for school and he can still send fourteen kids out the door late (Storrel having left precisely on time, bags packed and fathers kissed goodbye because there was some sort of mix up at the hospital and that's a capability Storrel has, it's what you get for birthing on Earth, according to Spock, who was so suspicious about the whole process that Jim just started hustling them all back to Vulcan a month early after Storrel).

**08:15**

Tamara's in babyjail - the fenced-in area of the office where you get to go if you're smart enough to crawl and dumb enough to think hurling yourself down the stairs is a great idea. George got sent there last time he suggested skydiving as an excellent hobby that would dissuade him from disobeying direct orders when he thought they were wrong (this, as a last resort, because every time Jim looked over at Spock during that conversation, Spock's eyebrow's started going and Jim cracked up). Kelvin's on the floor, with sparkly baby things to bat at.

And Jim and Spock are looking at the calendar.

The calendar is done on Tuesdays. It lasts a week. Twenty-one different people have their entire schedule mapped out on the calendar. There's color coding (Jim, until he started living with Spock, wasn't aware of twenty-one distinct colors, now he could tell you that T'Pala's the brassy gold but he's the yellow).

The calendar is also the thing that is going to end his marriage.

**08:23**

  
**  
**

"It's a dance recital. Is she even in it? No, no she is not. So I'll drive her there but I'm not staying to watch other people's four year olds stumble around a stage for two hours."

**08:34**

  
**  
**"Jim, be reasonable."  
**  
**

**08:37**

  
**  
**

"Fuck you and fuck _reasonable_." Jim kisses Spock on the cheek, in quick repentance. The cheek twitches.

  
**  
**

**08:42**

  
**  
**

"Why're you going to the doctor Thursday?"

**08:51**

  
**  
**

The garden is sort of a family project. For a while, when the house was first built, everyone had their own plots. Now it's just - you get pissed enough, you go garden for a while, nobody's going to bug you too much.

So Jim's not really feeling the guilt, for leaving Spock alone in the house. He's pissed at Spock, not the kids, but you don't know that when you're three and Daddy's growling at everything. He's got a baby monitor, he'll go in if Kelvin and Tam go off together.

If, a nasty little voice says, he can be promised he won't have to deal with Spock 'cause Spock's arms'll be too full of wailing baby.

He pulls pretty hard at something he's almost entirely sure is a weed and not Levin's latest science experiment (sixth year science on Vulcan? You get to play with the gene splicers). He's got sweat breaking out on his back and it's gross, but it's better than killing Spock with his bare hands.

**10:02**

  
**  
**

Spock leaves him a glass of water, and looks like he's going to pull back, and then seems to remember that he wasn't born with that much sense.

"It is only a consultation."

"This'll kill you, eventually," Jim says, glaring at what he thinks _is_ Levin's science project, and he's proud of the kid but it's fucking ugly. "And where the hell will I be then?"

Spock beats a hasty retreat, but probably only because there's a crash from the general direction of Tamara, who just hit the age where they all learn to pick the locks of babyjail.

**10:30**

  
**  
**

Jim gives up and drinks the water; it's more than lukewarm by now, but he's passed out here before, and Spock'd kill him for that. Spock's never been afraid of getting left alone and -

Thing is, guys have been able to have kids for fucking ever. Jim's got two great-granddads on one side, they were the second generation or so that could. Only, it doesn't take with some men and it never took with Jim. They tried the implant three times - the third time he nearly died from the rejection and Bones said he wouldn't try anymore.

That was right after T'Lask was born, and Jim had figured, ok, it's fine, five's enough. Five's a lot. Five's great. But Spock hadn't _wanted_ that. He'd begged, as much as Spock ever did. For a few more years - just to see what they'd get. And maybe then, barely thirty-five, Jim'd been too young to think that T'Lask was his last baby.

But Kelvin - they lost a baby between Tamara and T'Pala, four months before the due date. Jim'd been done then. Spock had begged again and Bones had said they could do it; Spock wasn't rejecting the implant and the implant would bear forty, if they got that crazy. So, Jim went with it. And Tamara was fine - Tamara's gorgeous, perfect. She's at that stage where she mostly looks like pudding and she keeps falling so her head's kind of like a really irregular pudding. But she's got Spock's long fingers and she has this thing for grabbing Jim's hand out of nowhere and trailing around with this really solid hold on it for _hours_.

And Jim had been ready to say OK, that was it. Tamara was great. Eighteen was a shitload of kids. They were done. By the time he got up the guts to say it, Spock was pregnant again. Kelvin was their what - sixth accident? Something like that, there was no point in being perfect with protection, and Jim always forgot and they'd never really _not_ been trying before.

But Kelvin - Kelvin was three months early, spent a month and a half in an incubator, went back in three weeks after that when he got jaundice. Jim'd never - the kids breaks bones. Storrel holds the record, he's got six to his name and Jim's pretty sure if he's still this excited about flying in three years he's going to see combat, and he has _nightmares_ about that. They sprain things and once a year, just like clockwork, everybody gets a cold and Jim spends a week literally s_iphoning snot_ out of tiny, tiny noses. And pacifying the rabid Spock, who isn't allowed near anyone small and not sick but who won't be isolated to his bed. So he roams the house like a zombie and Jim plays keep-away with the really little ones.

This year, he had to take Kelvin out to a hotel, spend a few nights there because a fucking _cold_ would've been such a major setback for him then, only one week in adjusted age and - they pretty much let the kids into the bed if they're asking for it, but not if they're OK outside of the bed. If Spock ever figures out that Kelvin asks for it most nights 'cause Jim spent that whole week curled around him then Jim's got hell to pay.

So, the thing is, Kelvin was their last baby. Theoretically, the implant can do forty. Most it's ever been asked to do it thirty-five and that was on some whacked-out colony and nobody knows what happened to those kids when they grew up and - and Jim was fucking _done_ and Spock fucking _knew it_. Or, they hadn't talked about it, but he's pretty sure his diligence with condoms (and they're fucking impossible to get, but the shot makes his arm swell up and it's once a week) tipped him off.

And he'd still booked an appointment with the baby doctor they got when they couldn't get Bones.

Jim finishes his water and storms inside. He's got half an hour before he has to go get Leo and Taven, and they'll notice if the house is messy, if it _looks _like he's been out for Spock's blood for a few hours. Spock won't have lunch with them anyway and Jim can get the boys set up with something and go do paperwork, whatever.

He figures the biggest hurdle is going to be holding their hands while all he wants to do is ball his up into fists and hit the walls.

**11:47**

  
**  
**

Spock shows for lunch and it's tense and it's _awful_, so Taven melts down right at the table because he wanted _spaghetti_ and they gave him _klitanta k'forati-mun_ instead. Leo, being Leo, observes the whole thing with dignity, and solves the problem by just eating Taven's while Jim's chewing him out in the other room. Which means that when Taven stops screaming long enough to get something in his mouth, he gets a sandwich. And falls asleep five minutes later, even though he's about six months out of really napping.

**12:29**

"It would not be unsafe," Spock says, when they're doing the dishes together, because it's been _twenty years_ and _nineteen kids_ and they've got this rhythm, so they eat together, they do the dishes together, they talk.

"He's still only in the fourth percentile for size," Jim says, firm. "Lung function's below average." He could've told Spock the stats, surfactant levels and weight, but Spock knows them as well as he does, which is to say Jim's got it all tattooed on his eyelids (that and Lee's latest letter home from school, which had been positively _vicious_ for a Vulcan schoolteacher).

But that sends him to check on Kelvin, safe in his crib, clutching this one raggedy blanket that'd been Stoket's, and Stok's only seven, but he'd given it to Kelvin when he was in the hospital because Stoket liked it when he was sick and by the time it'd been back in the house he'd forgotten about it and Kelvin pretty much won't be parted from it. He's a bright kid; Jim was pretty scrawny, too, and he knows about being the smartest when you can't be the strongest.

Still, Kelvin scares the fuck out of him sometimes, and when Jim presses a kiss to his forehead and creeps out of the room he thinks the skin is still too thin, thinks he'll still be able to seen shots of green through his skin where he shouldn't, next time he has to change the kid and he _can't_, not more than once.

**13:13**

"I am not pregnant," Spock says, and Jim nods, because hell, he knew that. He's still reading reports from Uhura's latest command, and they're technically perfect just - she's lying about something that happened a few weeks ago, and he wants to know what.

He had known that. They've never lied about things like that, they've never made decisions on their own like that, not since they decided to do this.

It was supposed to be just George, Jim remembers, faintly. Just George, and them, and the ship - their crew, too. It hadn't been - eighteen kids later he can't say it was the best plan, because he can't regret his kids (even if on days like today he wants to find the guy who kissed Spock in the transporter room when he thought they were both going to die and _beat him to death_ before he can do it). But it had been a plan where they felt like they could be themselves.

But there'd been New Vulcan, so barren of kids - one school evacuated, and those were kids over fifteen. And the Ambassador always kind of harping on them to have more. And the attack on the ship, when George was six months old - kid barely got scratched up, but Jim was _done_ with it after that because he could risk his life and he could risk Spock's but he wouldn't risk George's. He didn't have that in him and he'd throw himself out an airlock the second he thought he maybe could. And they'd both had brothers, had loved them in their own ways; the kids still go to Sam's for Christmas every year, try to overrun the old farmhouse while Sam and his wife and two boys kind of cower in the corners. Spock's brother's another story, but that's a story Jim doesn't like to tell, it makes him want to use the phasers that he and Spock are too damaged to throw out and it's hard to want to hit Spock and want to kill people for hurting Spock at the same time.

But wanting boys, wanting another boy, had gotten them to Storrel, and then they hadn't really thought much before they went on, with T'Lask. Hadn't really thought much about it again ever, because they were _doing this_ and they were doing it all the way.

Vulcan still doesn't have many kids, a few families of ten or so, one of six Jim knows of. But it's a culture that's about small families and nobody wanted to change that except the crazies. He and Spock, he guesses, are the crazies.

He realizes, somewhere, that he's not focusing on the reports, that Spock's still looking on him like he wants an answer, that the house is going to start to get full in a couple hours, that they can only be so good at pretending not to be angry at each other.

"We gotta talk," he says, and he feels so _stupid_ saying it, because they don't have a marriage with communication. They have a marriage with meditation and drinking and long, expensive vidcalls to Bones. But they do have to talk and they can both just about manage it when the alternative is the kind of fight that'll send at least a quarter of the kids into therapy.

"I concur," Spock says. And Jim nods again.

Taven wakes up before they can make definite plans, which is either a blessing or a curse.

**14:17**

  
**  
**

Lee's the first one in the door, three minutes before the last period of the day even technically ends, but they're so far past caring if Lee skips just _one_ class that Jim just directs her towards the kitchen to get something to eat and starts setting up for homework.

The thing with Lee is that she throws them for a loop. By the time they got to her they were on their second girl, their third baby. They figured they had this shit down _cold_. Lee was a colicky baby, a taciturn toddler, the kind of kid that sent Jim out of the house and into the garden a couple times a day when she was well behaved. Lee drives them _crazy_. She has a fake ID that Jim can't be bothered to take away because she'll just get another one. She drinks, she smokes, she does things neither of them wants to think about, except that they _have_ to.

She's grounded this week, but grounded for Lee is sort of a base state. Jim can't come up with a better punishment, and Spock's been exhausted with Lee since she was seven.

"She'll come around," Jim says, sometimes.

"At least when she is incarcerated we will know where she is," Spock will answer. He loves her, they both do; it's just an uphill battle to get her to let them, and sometimes they're losing.

Grounded means she can't lock herself in her room until after the homework on her PADD is done, and she can't do that without Jim's help because she never goes to school. It gets Spock too angry to do it, and Jim can fake it with textbooks, since she's in remedial everything, this year. Last year, too.

Once, her teacher had suggested transferring her to Earth, seeing if she'd do better with human kids. Jim only didn't hit her because he was restraining Spock. And because sometimes he thinks it'd be a good idea. A couple months with Sam, a couple months with just one of her parents, because Lee's too much to handle as one of nineteen, and that's maybe what the goal is.

"Lee _Kirk_," Jim says, sharp and reflexive when he sees her leaving the kitchen and turning for her room. "Get your ass in a chair at this table. Now."

He figures he's only got another six months where that's going to go at all, and he wants her to get another year of school out of that.

**14:46**

"I think your _ko-mekh-il_ was at this summit."

"Don't fucking care."

"Bad _words, _Lee," this from Taven, who is set up in Jim's lap, coloring and ignoring the fact that Jim's head's about to explode and Lee's about to jam her stylus in his eye and they're not even six pages into a forty page chapter of modern Vulcan diplomatic history.

"I'm never fucking _alone_, how the hell would you react?" Lee says, launching into an old complaint even though Jim can't figure out how she's been provoked this time.

"Yeah, I've got this whole great house to myself, never have to spend the night with six other people in my bed and all those dinners to myself," Jim says. "Answer question eight, we'll take a break before the little kids get home, yeah?"

"You had a _choice_," Lee says, though she does have the decency to say it in Klingon. Go Uhura.

**15:12**

  
**  
**

He ropes Lee back in, and thinks how much easier it'd be if he'd done something to make her mad. If he could resent her or apologize or something.

He has to get up, somewhere around where the rest of the kids are getting home from school, grabs Spock's arm and hauls him into the kitchen.

"You're sure she's ours, right?"

"I did spend a night with a rabid sehlat around the time of her conception," Spock says, joking before Jim remembers that they're supposed to be mad at each other.

"Explains it," Jim murmurs, and he's mad enough he doesn't rest his head on Spock's collarbone, just takes Tamara out of his arms. "Music, right?" Spock nods. "Trade you?"

"She is that obstinate today?"

"If you say no I'm calling your father."

"You will need four _ka'athyra_," Spock reminds him, because Jim always leaves the house with either three or six, but never four. "We will still need to talk."

As if Jim could fucking _forget_.

**15:57**

  
**  
**

When Jim was a kid, he used to love transporters. There weren't many on Earth, back then, and they were mostly military. They got to use them if they were visiting their mom on base, or for anything to do with the _Kelvin. _It'd been cool, and it had cut down on the time in a hovercar with his stepdad and Sam, because they'd always fight and Sam'd always end up in a corner, kind of hunched in on himself and looking miserable.

So when they resigned from active duty and they were talking about where they were going to actually _live_ if space wasn't an option, one of the things New Vulcan had had going for it (asides from Spock wanting and the kids maybe needing it, and Sarek being there, and the Ambassador, back then), was that they'd settled a whole planet with the population of Greater Riverside. So there were just a fuckload of transporters.

A transporter, it turns out, is awesome with two kids. It works with up to four. By the time you get to five, it's a little stressful. At eleven, it makes you cry tears of blood.

Jim never really understood Bones until he had to start sending the kids through on their own. Well, in sets of two. But it's still close enough to on their own with no way of checking that they got down safely unless they've all got comms on them, which never happens and doesn't work when you're running late on a planet where running late is basically unheard of, but frowned on in theory.

Four _ka'athyra_, one mock drum set, Stoket plays the piano because he's a rebel like that, Amanda's been lugging around her guitar for a while like that's suddenly going to get on Spock's approved list of instruments so it comes along because what Spock doesn't know won't hurt him and will get Amanda to babysit for free when Jim and Spock need the time off (by this, Jim means, when they want to have quiet, sort of secretive, sex in the middle of the day without anyone noticing except Amanda, who was around when they used to be able to make out in the kitchen without Storrel and Ben lodging a formal protest or Beth starting to talk about therapy in the ominous tones that only an eleven year old can pull off).

Anyway, with eleven, and only one parent going with them, he sends them through two by two and waits it out, and watches the other ones and considers whether or not it's really safe to leave seven behind with Spock when Lee's in a mood like she is (worse than most days, but she's not going to run away, not today, anyway, and she never really gets that far).

**16:04**

  
**  
**

He always forgets that he trades blowjobs for not having to take the kids to music lessons because T'Pring hates him (OK, kind of understandably, he's a husband-stealing hussy according to her clan histories).

**16:13**

  
**  
**

Also, music lessons are really boring, but there's unbridled fury when he falls asleep during them, and he does feel like kind of a bad parent for doing it.

**16:39**

  
**  
**

Especially because he almost dropped T'Pala when he woke up, this last time.

He knew the drums would kill one of the kids eventually. he always just figured it'd be Spencer who has to share Stoket's room.

**17:12**

  
**  
**

Kids are returned, Spock and Lee aren't really speaking.

Jim used to get taken prisoner fairly often, and on days like today this feels _just like it_.

Except that when he's taking a minute, head leaned up against the cool metal of the fresh-food fridger and eyes closed, T'Reen comes up and hugs him around the waist.

"Hey, baby," he says, and scoops her up. At six, she's getting heavy and he's getting old, but he doesn't really mind. "What're you looking for?"

"Hugs from you," she says, and winds her hands around his neck. He catches the back of Spock's head - involved in some sort of make-believe with most of the boys in the hallway, blanket around his shoulders like a cape and wonders if she was put up to this. But she's small and she's warm and doesn't know that she's too big to be a dead weight in his arms.

But she's weighing him down, keeping him on the ground here, even if the gravity should be doing that on its own. And his stupid, persistent husband sent her in because he's too mad to hug Jim himself but gets that Jim needs it.

He met, once, this guy with a stick up his ass. That guy wouldn't have been wearing a cape and turning his four-year-old upside down or deputizing six-year-olds to deal with feelings because he didn't know if he could bring himself to. And Jim?

Jim didn't used to like being grounded.

So, OK. Stir-fry for dinner.  



	2. Part Two

There's a sort of chewy silence in the house; kids are eating, Jim wasn't hungry, Spock got distracted by something and ran back to his office (he's writing another textbook). Jim thinks about calling George but then just settles down, starts the long, slow process of rocking Kelvin to get him thinking about maybe someday sleeping (Kelvin? He sleeps like the fucking dead, but it's _getting_ him there that's all the work. Jim prefers the ones who are up ten times a night for two minutes just to check that they're still the center of the universe).  


Amanda's not a really intuitive kind of person, and she never has been. But enough significant glances and she starts riding herd on the little kids with Jim, getting them eating. Then she smacks a plate down in front of Jim and glares at him (she looks _worryingly_ like Sarek).

"Eat, Dad," she says, and one of his great accomplishments as a parent is that most of his kids are totally okay with being assholes to him (even though they'd never think about doing it to Spock). Jim figures people should have the ability to be assholes, and it's not something Spock could teach because he never does it on purpose.

He takes a mouthful and she smirks. Levin starts telling a story about his physical education class, trying to engage T'San in a debate over scores; they were on opposing teams, Jim thinks, but he's not following either of their thought processes very well. Storrel's talking with them, though. He's only a couple years older than T'San, but there's this weird divide between he and T'Lask and T'San and Levin. Storrel and T'Lask boss the other two around, treat them like chattel or like their own kids, most of the time.

Jim feels bad, shrugging all this off onto the kids, but he'd feel worse hollering at them all and he's feeling more and more trapped in his skin the more time goes by without just having it out with Spock already.

**18:00**

He seriously considers announcing to all of them that bedtime's come two, three and four hours early, respectively (or, Amanda doesn't really have a bedtime, but she generally retreats to her room and does some sort of arcane teenage thing. So does Lee, if Lee's around). He actually tried that once, and nobody went along with it, and he felt bad for literally days afterwards (George thought it was funny, but George's coping mechanism is to think everything is vaguely hilarious).

Something beeps in the kitchen, and Jim decides that maybe Selek and his credit in mechanical engineering aren't allowed in there until they get less enthusiastic about reprogramming. He legitimately cannot tell if that was the vidphone or the oven, neither of which really has a reason to be beeping.

**18:03**

  
**   
**

"Jo."

"I can't ask Mom."

"You've gotta have _friends_."

"They aren't having kids yet."

"He _doesn't have a vagina_."

"Got that."

"_So_ he probably can't help."

"Just go get your goddamned husband, Uncle Jim," she drawls, every inch her father's daughter, and on bed rest mostly because her obstetrician interned with Bones and has spent the past ten years of his life living in the dark shadow of what if he fucked up and it was _McCoy's_ daughter. The guy must be living out his worst nightmare, Jim figures.

He's just not sure how he feels about Spock settling in for a thirty-minute talk about Braxton-Hicks contractions when they're about to have the no-more-kids fight. But really, this time.

**18:15**

Jim felt less like a military commander when he _was_ a military commander than he does at bath time. He's been experimenting with a two-kids-to-a-tub system, but Selek has just announced that he, personally, is too old for that. That seems like the sort of thing Jim has to respect, but he can't really leave Tam and Taven _alone_ in the bath, and he also can't tell Selek to wait because then Selek would have to get dressed again and it all feels so freaking pointless at that point and really, if seventeen out of eighteen kids _didn't_ smell - except Lee, who is probably outside smoking, and if Spock would _get off the goddamn vidphone_ then maybe someone could _do something about that_ but no, that can't be done because -

OK, deep breaths. Baby shampoo smells like lavender and that's soothing, isn't it? Deep breaths. Kill Spock and disconnect comm lines later. Just. Get through bath time. He can _do that_.

The thing is, for a few months, right at the beginning? Angry at Spock was Jim's base state. Being happy with Spock was this weird thing that happened once every couple weeks and made him feel like he maybe wasn't a total fuck up as a captain, officer or sentient being because, hey, his First wasn't the worst person ever and _he_ stuck around despite being a willful asshole.

Now? Now being mad at Spock sets his teeth on edge and makes him twitchy and makes little things the kids do feel like the time George got himself, T'Lask and Storrel stuck up a tree. T'Lask was two months old, Storrel was ten months. George had devised a sling to do it. It was simultaneously the most hilarious and most awful thing that had ever happened to Jim, at that point. He's not sure he's been so angry with one of the kids since - even Lee, on her worst days, doesn't manage to be as pig-headed _stupid_ as George at five (though Spock holds that the early signs of brilliance in the field of mechanical engineering make his entrance in Starfleet medical a - quote - ridiculous folly which he will hopefully live to regret). Considering Jim had still been stuck in bed with the rejection and hooked up to more tubes than Spock'd ever let him count, the reaming out had been damn impressive.

Anyway, the point is that Selek does not actually deserve to be disowned for asking for some privacy.

"Put on a towel and wait, you can go last," Jim says, diplomatically, he hopes. He leans up and kisses Selek's temple, just in case it _did_ come out a little tight.

To, you know, confuse him extra or something.

**19:00**

  
**   
**

Tam's in bed, and it turns out Selek wanted the washroom to himself to stage elaborate naval battles involving everyone's shampoo, a hairbrush George forgot, and Spock's old commbadage.

He so totally deserves that disowning, and Jim is going to get to be smug again about how he took off the lock in the bathroom door after the third time Lee made her escape through the window (she mostly just goes out through the front door now, leaves a note about where she's going and they call it sort of almost even).

Spock's off the comm, lurking in the door of Tam's and T'Pala's room, T'Pala sleepy and docile in his arms, waiting for her few minutes of undivided attention when Jim is done Tam's bedtime rituals (a kiss on her nose, one on each eyelid, a quiet prayer that Jim's never been able to get Spock to admit comes from Amanda, but which he imagines does. The kids still go for it, though, and it's the only religion Spock or Jim has ever really bothered to give them).

"I would not wish to do any of that again," says Spock, who has been on bedrest all of twice (George, because Jim was so fucking freaked that Spock consented to it and just did all of the paperwork for a month or so before he got bored and got back up and then T'Pala).

"Not _funny_," Jim nearly sing songs as soon as he clicks over to the fight he guesses they're having now, and T'Pala looks at him as if he's deranged.

"Night, Daddy," she says, and kisses his eye (probably aiming for his cheekbone). She then tightens her hold on Spock's neck.

Fuck, the kids play favorites worse than they do.

**19:27**

  
**   
**

"The idea of another child is so disconcerting to you?" Spock sounds confused - well, flat, but Jim knows he _means_ confused, with the way he's standing.

"Selek, I swear, if you don't get out of that bath right now," Jim says to the bathroom door, and trails off, because he has no actual threat to make. He can't put the kid in a time-out an hour before bedtime. Selek'd just read until he passed out and see it as the best treat ever. "I will be really disappointed."

Spock gives him a look, and then adds, "and for my part, I will not have the time to prepare anything to put in your lunch tomorrow. I had planned on the _quintara_ nuts that Commander Sulu -"

The sound of splashing and then wet feet on tile. Their children maintain the elaborate delusion that Spock can cook. Sulu maintains the happy delusion that if he sends high sugar content foods to Jim's children, Jim will not eventually kill him with his bare hands (he won't, the kids get so damn _happy_ about the packages in the mail).

"The idea of you having another child scares the fuck out of me," Jim says.

"Don't _swear_, Dad," Ben says, passing by, a mug clutched in one hand, a paintbrush in the other.

There are no art supplies in the direction in which he's headed and Jim is not dealing with more of the impromptu redecoration Ben and Spencer did two months ago, so he tears off after him.

It's not avoidance if you have an excuse.

**19:35**

  
**   
**

"But _why_ did you paint Beth?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time, Daddy," says Levin, who only pulls out the daddies when he's in deep shit. This is mostly funny, but Jim counts it as a win if they don't know that.

"In the interest of personal expression," says Beth.

"Like George's tattoo," adds Ben who would build a shrine to George in his closet if Jim didn't run regular sweeps of all the closets in the house to look for illegal drugs, interesting new kinds of mold, and everybody's left shoes.

"George's tattoo is stupid, though," says Spencer, who is mostly a witness, though Jim's not ruling out accomplice since that looks like green paint in the hair behind his left ear.

"Don't call your brother stupid and don't paint your sister," he says, while he still has anyone's attention. It never lasts long.

"I consented," Beth tells him, totally serious. "To experiment with my self image."

"Don't paint her indoors, then," Jim says, since he mostly doesn't want to have to clean the carpet and they didn't lay down paper or anything. "Or without consent. Are you and your experimental self image going to school like that?"

Beth hadn't thought of that, and screws up her face.

"_Daddy! It's bedtime now_," Taven and Leo scream in perfect harmony, at a pitch that could break glass if Spock still thought having anything made of glass made financial sense.

"Think about it," Jim says, though privately he _wants_ to send her to school with her blond hair matted with purple paint. It would cement his reputation as frighteningly neglectful and the kids' teachers would stop writing long-winded letters home about _nothing_ and so he wouldn't have to read them anymore.

**19:41**

  
**   
**

"Love you, baby boys," he whispers, into Leo's hair, which smells good, like little kids' hair always does. A bit like glue, a bit like sweat, a bit like soap and a bit like baby powder. They're sweet, all curled up in their twin beds, low to the ground because they both roll and fall but they're clever enough to get rid of anything like a bar. Leo's got a stuffed kitten clasped in one hand, and Taven's holding onto Spock like a lifeline. Spock'll hang around until they're both dozing and pull away. Taven has nightmares.

God, this is their _life_ and as much as it wakes him screaming in the night sometimes, he loves it.

There's a knock at the door, and T'San's there. She looks freshly-showered, sort of sad, tired.

"Dad, do you have a moment?" She asks, all serious, and there's this alarm going off in his head saying his kid is _asking_ for attention with words instead of projectiles and tears, and so this is a _big fucking deal_.

Still scares the shit out of him every time.

"Yeah, baby, what do you need?"

"In private, please?" She says, still all serious, and he and Spock share this look like they're in so far over their heads they've forgotten all about breathing. T'San doesn't look like she's been crying, and she was loud enough at dinner, but still. This doesn't really happen with twelve-year-old girls.

They'd been planning, vaguely, on talking a little in the twenty-minute lull between the boys going to sleep and the next round of bedtimes. At least working out where the fuck Lee is, anyway.

"Yeah. C'mon, we'll make you some of Sa-mekh-al's godawful tea, 'kay?"

Spock nods, once, deeply. None of that shit about telepathic mating bonds is _true_ (this was only a letdown until Jim realized that if he had to put up with Spock as deep into his head as he gets during a meld all the time he'd kill them both). Jim still gets a lot from that nod; Jim should go, the tea is almost out so he'd better use it sparingly if he expects their marriage to last out the week, Spock'll find Lee and confiscate whatever she's smoking, as much good as that'll do them.

He thinks about grabbing T'San's hand and decides he'd better not risk it if she's feeling open, still, he takes her into his office, settles her on the couch and wonders when the hell being twelve got so serious.

Well, OK, the year Jim was twelve was pretty bad, in terms of serious things. But he never _took_ them as seriously as little Vulcans seem to take everything.

"I spoke with Malen today," Malen's been in T'San's classes their whole lives; T'San's half in love with him and Jim sometimes idly fantasizes about walking her down the aisle at their wedding and being able to ignore the whole dynastic-clan-alliance element because she'd be happy and it'd be adorable. They used to play wedding when they were four - Jim braiding flowers for T'San's hair and Malen's mother commenting on the developmental importance of imaginative play.

"You speak with Malen _every_ day," Jim points out, hoping that Malen hasn't proposed an elopment or experimentation with drugs or sex or anything. He's not emotionally prepared to deal with that. And twelve year olds can't possibly be having sex.

Well, alright, _Jim_ was thirteen. But that was a mistake. And Spock was fucking twenty-seven. And Jim lets Spock be in charge of teaching the children about healthy relationships since Spock's been in _two_ and Jim frequently feels like while Spock has a healthy relationship with him he just pretends not to be a mess very well.

"His mother has made a decision," T'San screws up her face, "well, probably his whole clan."

Oh, _fuck_. Jim totally knows where this is going, and he doesn't have any fucking clue why she wants him for it.

"About a bonding?'

"To an offworld Vulcan," she nods. "Who he has never met."

"How does Malen feel about that?" T'San considers it again. Jim feels chicken for starting with Malen who is going to have clear-cut, dramatic feelings, as relayed by one preteen to another in a moment of extreme, contrived Romeo-and-Juliet stupid tragedy. T'San's going to have real feelings and they're going to be messy and they're going to break him.

"Resigned, I think," she says finally. "I am looking into solutions." Oh. She's not asking him for paternal support and a shoulder to cry on. She's asking his advice as a professional bond-breaking, marriage-destroying hussy. That one's new (well, not entirely, he may have covertly taught George how not to act like an asshole in bars since George _is_ kind of an asshole when left to his own devices).

"T'San -"

"Sa-Mekh says that it is most important to be happy in your love life," T'San advises. Jim wonders if maybe Spock has some other love life he doesn't know about where that advice makes any sense. He and Spock do best when they're just fighting their way along but have each other. Though - and he thinks this in a moment of unrepentant romanticism of the kind that Bones has always frowned upon and which Jim disapproves of in his children - it's been rare that they've been unhappy with each other. Just the rest of the universe.

"Sa-Mekh almost got himself disowned marrying me, you know," T'San smirks. Of _course_ she knows.

T'San, though lithe now, was a pudgy, solid child. She loved to be carried, loved stories, even as a newborn wanted the sound of voices. They used to leave old ship's logs playing in her crib when they wanted her to sleep. This was one of her favorite stories - the brave captain who swept the stubborn, hot (word choice varied, with this story, with Jim's emotional state, with the volatility of his marriage) Vulcan officer off his feet. Who stole him away from the terrible fate of a tenured position at the Academy and the kind of Vulcan wife who carried a grudge for twenty-one years but _also_ ran a very-nearly-black-market trade in sex toys out of her music academy (Jim only knew this because Spock told him. T'Pring felt selling any to Jim would be admitting defeat. T'Pring had remarried _eighteen years ago_, but that didn't seem to bother her). The Vulcan officer's father's rage and eventual decision that he cared more about his son's happiness than the shakiness of a clan alliance based on marriage rather than mutual understanding. The accidental first child and the decision that family was more important than adventure.

Yeah, she knows that story.

"Honey," Jim says, the slow drawl of his thinking, but T'San still leans closer. He doesn't know how to say this. He grew up knowing his parents had loved each other, wanted each other, wanted _him_. He grew up knowing his stepfather hadn't wanted him, his mother hadn't wanted his stepfather. He's taken so many steps to make sure his kids know how he feels about Spock, how he's unreasoning and stupid and crazy with needing him twenty-one years later. Spock indulges him in it, indulges him in a need to touch and be touched and the little acts of affection that Jim knows still don't make sense to him. T'San doesn't know this part of the story, and maybe she's not old enough for it, and part of him wants to go ask Spock, but another part of him is solid in this need to tell her.

"Yes?" He's thought long enough that she's gotten bored, or something. She's toying with one of the paperweights Chapel keeps sending him.

"He almost didn't break the bond, T'San," Jim says. "And I would've forgiven him for not. You can't - Malen will choose, everybody gets a chance to choose."

"It's a _formality_," T'San argues. Then, smaller, "and he never would've married her, would he?"

"What does Sa-Mekh say about duty?"

"That it is better to do yours to the best of your abilities than to struggle to do everybody's,' T'San says, faithfully.

"It took us both a long time - _years_, T'San, and we were adults, then - to figure out what Sa-mekh's duty was."

"He loves you, though." Fuck, this is just what he didn't want. Not on a day when they're fighting. Not on a day where he's already walking on nails and worried they're going to pierce his skin, really, for the first time in a couple years.

"And Sa-mekh-al, and _ezyet_ T'Pol, and New Vulcan, and about a million other things," Jim says. "If Malen changes his mind-"

"He _has_ to," she says, immediately. And she's so desperate about it that Jim can't even bring himself to remember that he fell in love about a billion times between twelve and twenty-five and that she probably will too. It's real right now.

"That's the thing," he says, "he has to do a lot of things." The stubborn set of her lip is Sam's. That set once got Jim to jump right off the roof of the barn because Sam had constructed a cushioning device, but was afraid of heights.

"But Dad -" And he doesn't know how to tell her how much it hurt to have to wonder why Spock wouldn't choose him over everything when, back then, he would've chosen Spock (eventually did choose George) over his ship, over his _home_. He can't tell her about the sting of having to act like an adult and wait, knowing that maybe waking up with Spock's feet cold between his calves and his rooms the approximate temperature of hell might be a temporary kind of thing. Because she's not an adult and she should be able to kick and scream as much as she wants even if she's going to forget about all this by next Thursday.

"It's hard, right?" He finally comes out with, and she nods a little, strong lip trembling. "Disappointing?" he tries next, and she nods again. "I get it."

"But Sa-mekh chose you?" Jim thinks about it, thinks about the look on Spock's face when he had to tell T'Pring that the life that somebody had been planning for them since they were children wasn't going to happen. He thinks about the way that Spock didn't reach for his hand until _after _that, and he knows that Spock didn't so much choose Jim as choose himself. And Spock wanted Jim then, wants him now, wanted this family and got it.

It's a comforting thing to know, but it's maybe too complicated for a twelve-year-old, and so he says, "something like that." And holds out his arms while she bursts into tears.

**20:45**

By the time that's over, and T'San has been tucked up with a book and some hot milk, Jim's missed a round of bedtimes, and everybody who wants tucking in is done. Lee's been sent to her room - she wasn't doing anything illegal, and for that, Jim applauds her.

"I can say with a fair amount of certainty that she has stayed there," Spock says, as if he's not quite sure why. It's getting to be that it surprises them when she listens.

"T'San asked me how to ruin a marriage."

"It is a skill of yours," Spock teases, nearly smirking, and Jim smiles back.

"Did I do it again?" Spock shakes his head. "But?" Jim prompts.

"I was only going to the physician to discuss the feasibility of another -" Spock starts, and Jim had been so calm, so fucking _happy_ with remembering how this started and that only starts him off again.

"The _medical_ feasibility, Spock," he says, "you wanted to talk about the medical feasibility because this is not - it's not feasible, Spock. I can't fucking do it again. Not with Kelvin like he is, not with Lee like she is. We have to be fucking done now because I can't - because it's not feasible for me and I get that you're the one carrying them and god, thank you but -"

"But you are not happy," Spock fills in, and Jim used to punch walls. He hasn't done it in this house, but it's too late to go out and garden and he's seriously thinking about how he's going to explain a few broken knuckles to his kids because Spock is so fucking s_tupid_.

"I am happy," he yells, and it'll be funny later, but Spock's looking so stricken and Jim's so furious that it's not. "I'm happy with them and I'm so fucking happy with you and I love you and the kids are - they're amazing, they're the best thing, but I can't hurt them. I can't spend another month letting them all run fucking wild because I can't stand leaving the hospital because one of them can't breathe on his own because you're so damn _selfish_, Spock, and -" he stops because that's - that's wrong. It's not even true. He doesn't _think_ that.

"There were only ten thousand of us," Spock says, quietly.

"Ten thousand, three hundred and sixty-one," Jim answers. "And T'Leketa was pregnant, remember? I know."

"There are over twenty-billion humans," Spock says. "You do not know."

"There are twelve thousand now," Jim tells him, and they're both quiet now. They're in the library - the kids don't really use this room, and it's far from anyone's bedroom. Later, he'll worry that they heard the fight. Right now he's too busy worrying that it'll be the last one they heard.

"Have you ever thought that Lee is right?"

"Lee's right about a lot of things, she's a smart girl," Jim says. "I didn't mean what I said, you know I didn't -"

"You very rarely say things you do not mean."

"You didn't know me when I was George's age," Jim tries to joke, and Spock gives him this withering look. So. Right. Not moving on and pretending it never happened. Fuck.

"We do not discuss it so often, do we?"

"Kids?" Jim suggest, squirming.

"Why she is so rebellious."

"Because she's sixteen, because she's Lee, because she wants to make sure we're looking," Jim rattles off. He knows it.

"I think it is because she believes we have never looked enough," Spock rephrases. "Is she right?"

And Jim doesn't know what to say. Because maybe she is right. Maybe it's not that Lee wants attention, but that she couldn't figure out another way to get it.

"I'll go check on Taven," he says, instead.

**21:18**

  
**   
**

He does, but Taven's asleep, and Leo's just playing quietly with his stuffedkitten, so Jim pretends he didn't see that and slips into the older girl's room. Amanda's lying back on the bed, headphones in, pretending she's somewhere else, playing something on an imaginary guitar. She looks up at him, looks back down. Lee's sitting cross-legged on her bed. Maybe meditating.

"Sa-mekh'll be happy when I tell him you were doing that," he says, and she looks up.

"Wasn't, just thinking," it's too quick, she was. Most of the kids get twitchy, headaches, stuff like that, when they don't. Lee likes to see how long she can let it go.

"You OK?" It's been a while since he asked, the assumption is that she's not and that she's not going to be.

"I'm, yeah, I'm good," she says after a minute, toys with the leg of her pants. "You?"

"Fighting with your father," he tells her, smiles, sort of crooked.

"Hiding?" she asks.

"Maybe a little," he admits.

"You want a smoke?" she offers, and he very nearly says yes. But he has his own contraband in the basement and probably shouldn't take any from her, even if that's one of the habits they've mainly been letting slide.

"He gets any more stubborn and I'll take you up on that," she fights not to laugh and it makes him kind of ridiculously happy. He used to be able to tickle her under the chin, but she looks like she'd bite him, these days.

"If you get divorced, can I have Kelvin?" Amanda asks, but she looks a little nervous.

"It's not that kind of fight," Jim says, trying to be sure for them when he can't be for himself.

"When he came in here he said he'd consider if Kelvin didn't start to drool less soon," Lee says. "Can I have my own room?"

Teenage girls are very good at finding neuroses, and Jim is very good at finding his husband.

**21:27**

"I say stupid shit sometimes," Jim opens with. "In case you never noticed before." Spock doesn't quite turn around, but his hand stops moving over the PADD. No more equations tonight. Just fighting. "And I don't always think before I speak. And I only think sometimes that maybe we should've stopped having kids ten back, but I wouldn't take a minute of it back. If you were selfish, so was I. OK?"

"I think, sometimes," Spock starts, and then stops. "I know that your intellect is not like mine. Not so cataloged as I have made myself."

"Yeah," Jim agrees, since that's right and Spock's going somewhere with it.

"And I have been extraordinarily selfish. When I chose you, I thought that perhaps if I contributed enough to the population, if I had them bonded to other Vulcans, if I bred us out as much as I could as quickly as I could-"

"That's not what kids are-"

"For," Spock finishes, "I have known this, Jim. Since George was seven and we fought about this."

"I won," Jim smirks.

"You often do."

"Malen's father talked to you, didn't he?"

"Three weeks ago. It would only have angered you to know."

"She's pretty torn up about it. But he can still change his mind. Or she could become a hooker on Telluride."

"Lee could be an excellent madam," Spock says, nearly smirking, and they both look at each other, horrified.

"I'd kill everyone who even tried to go to the brothel, though," Jim adds, because they both would but he'll be doing all the murdering in this relationship. "I didn't know you regretted it." It doesn't sting as much as he thought it would, to say it, because Spock's not _going_ anywhere. He can't be. He chose Jim and he lost his other options and maybe - that could be good enough. It could be enough to get to keep him and still have to know that he would've made another choice.

"It is selfish that I do not," Spock says, and Jim lets out a breath at realizing he doesn't have to live like that, even if he _would_.

"I still won't do it again," he tells him. "We're all - this is stupid and human and you're not going to like it, OK?" Spock nods. "We're all here, you know? Kelvin's here and that's everybody. So. I'm done now."

"We are agreed that I was selfish then?" Spock asks. Jim's waiting for his concession though. He knows Spock's tricks.

"You had a lot of duties to do and you figured out you could be happy, too," Jim says. "That's not selfish, it's just practical."

"I am fairly certain that it is not practical to stretch one's finances and risk one's health to try to please T'Pau," Spock says.

"If it was about that, I'd've made you stop at Storrel," Jim says. "Or maybe Amanda. There's nothing in this world that's ever going to make T'Pau happy. Your dad likes them though."

"Spencer told me that my father called him a hooligan."

"He used to the word hooligan?" Jim asks, briefly distracted. Sarek once told him he was the height of illogic, and then drunkenly that he had pretty hair. But still. _'_Hooligan' seems a step too far.

"I suppose he must have," Spock says. "I only wanted -"

"You and I aren't going to singlehandedly populate New Vulcan, OK?" Jim says. "We can do a lot of things. We can raise good kids and we can get them to go out and raise more good kids. We can keep Lee from burning down whole cities and we can make sure that they wash their hands often enough that nobody starts a plague. We can love them and we can love each other and we can let them figure it out on their own. Some of them aren't going to have kids and some of them are going to move to Telluride and be hookers and George is probably going to sleep around a lot. So it's not feasible. We're not doing it. I'm - this is me saying no, OK?"

"I made the choice to begin this and I suppose that you can finish it," Spock concedes, but that's not right either.

"I just say that to be mean," Jim says, quietly. Has he really never said this before? "I would've done anything to have your kids, OK? I love it. Scares the fuck out of me but I love it. You gotta know that."

"I had always thought you must," Spock says. "I will cancel the appointment."

"We can - we can talk again?" Jim offers, because he can't read Spock right now. "Calm down, maybe?"

"Will you change your mind?" Jim shakes his head. "I could not do this on my own any more than you could."

And Jim has no idea how he gets into Spock's lap, how his hands get into Spock's hair, because that is what he needed to hear. That he's not alone here in water over his head while Spock's floating, not even working to breathe.

**22:41**

  
**   
**

Spock's got his head on Jim's stomach on the fake-leather couch of the study and Jim feels boneless and sprawled and _happy_. There is something really different and really amazing about non-pro-creative sex. He's smiling, bland and inane and Spock would be too if he didn't have the most well-trained facial muscles in the world.

Jim had him screaming twenty minutes ago, and that never really gets old.

"Haven't done that on a couch in a while," Jim says, trying for sexy and feeling like he maybe hit elderly.

"If you go running tomorrow I will be doing nothing to help you with the ensuing problems with your lower spine," Spock tells him.

"You're so fucking _smug_," Jim grumbles.

"I have every right to be," Spock says levering himself up, reaching for his pants.

**23:02**

  
**   
**

They got a little stuck in Kelvin's room, making the rounds of the kids. The older girls are still awake, and Ben, but Ben goes to sleep when he wants to and if he's tired in the morning Jim decided years ago that that isn't his problem, really.

"I think he'll own restaurants," Jim suggests. It's an old favorite game, though he's been told (by Bones) that it's unhealthy and will ruin all of their children. Whatever. It's fun.

"He will write books," Spock puts in.

"Manage an insane asylum."

"That will be George," Spock counters.

"Academy acceptances are next week, yeah?" Jim asks.

"She'll have two weeks to change her mind," Spock answers, shifting with him, easy like that.

It's like this, when they fight now. It goes quick, it gets glossed over, but there's less weight on Jim's shoulders when it's done.

"Astrophysics.'

"Biology."

"She likes it when things explode, and she wants to study the Romulan sun," Jim says, quietly. "She told me a couple weeks ago. That's why she wants Starfleet."

"She would not go so far from home," Spock says, and Kelvin stirs, so they leave, arguing Amanda's future all the way down the hall, both of them probably knowing that they've got no say in it.

**23:51**

  
**   
**

Jim wakes up, from what was really only a light doze. Spock's still got a hold of his hand, and he's fucking _out_ for the count. Someone's doing something in the kitchen, but it's T'Reen pulling at the sheets that woke him up. He disentangles himself from Spock, and pulls her up into the bed, a light kiss on the tip of her ear.

"Sleeping now, right, baby?" he asks, and she nods, solemnly. Beds down with her hand in Spock's shirt and her sharp nose poking at Jim's jugular.

  
_Fuck_, Jim thinks, _we have nineteen of these_. And as always, he's not sure if he's amazed or scared.

  



End file.
